the waking state mind is like a narrow film of seemingly concentrated objectivity, i.e. through these human minds we typically only have a thin view of the goings on here, our attention firmly attracted to the seeming density of objects. however, this objective denseness is only an assumption – through the investigation of the substance of what is here, this denseness dissolves into subtler and subtler fields, the mind becoming more and more transparent to the reality from which objects arise. in other words, through relaxation into the ‘space’ of consciousness all aspects of our perceiving, the seeming density of perceivable mentations becomes looser and less fixed, and even the waking state can become invisibly permeable to deeper realms of Mind-at-Large. these deeper realms are shared perhaps by a collective space acting behind the scenes, a realm wherein objects are only half-formed and have not yet broken through the veil of the viewable transcript of what is known in waking. creative inspiration and deep, vivid dreams are two examples of the arisings of information from a deeper realm of mind.
it is sometimes called the collective unconscious, not because it’s ultimately unconscious, but because we typically don’t have access to it in the waking state – it’s more like the ‘collectively unattended’. it is possible that our actions and thoughts and perhaps all our endeavours are informed by deeper realms of Mind to which we have no perceivable access, but when distinct material arises from this deeper well-spring it comes with the stamp of primordial, perhaps archetypal creativity. so it’s not that you can ‘see’ the collective unconscious, as per the limits of the waking state, but that what streams into this waking state can be ideas not bound to the rigid patterning of our typical mentations. the human mind has its limits of attention – but the objects arising within this attention can be informed by deeper realms as we relax into presence and openness.
the muse of being 